Eulenspiegel Across the noonday café terrace where canal reflections wept from ivy clustered walls and became brief echoes, coffee conversation turned to the price of pearls; how to ascertain beyond doubt which was of most value, the one that had no worldly price and, like certain earthlings, could not be bought. Yet on the breeze that lifted the weary pages of your carnet, played cache-cache with the candles still burning from the night before, came hints that this might have been a game of mirrors, an espièglerie of pale images that danced among the flitting waiters, who, if only you had dared to ask, might have told you that even as you sat alone with listless unkempt words and unkept promises, your path was soon to cross with hers, and the mirror then would crack from side to side, opening up doorways to a different world. (Christopher Moncrieff)
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